Guise and Dolls: Dis/covering Power, Re/Covering Nana

This article analyzes Zola's Nana (1880) from the point of view of her clothed body to discover how it marks her place in the social and political world of the Second Empire and serves as a visual analogue of this regime's demise. It demonstrates how fashion and dress emblematize the psychological and political dynamic contained in the novel and how clothing functions as a register of narrative developments in the plot. Zola, modelling fashion discourses of the time, merged vestimentary codes with symbolic ones in order to highlight classed and gendered issues of containment and control. (TD)